In philosophy, Ryle's regress is a classic argument against cognitivisttheories, and concludes that such theories are essentially meaningless as they do not explain what they purport to.
Overview
The philosopherGilbert Ryle was concerned with what he called the intellectualist legend which requires intelligent acts to be the product of the conscious application of mental rules. In other words Ryle was attempting to combat Cartesian dualism. A fine summation of the position which Ryle is combating is the famous statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson that, "The ancestor of every action is a thought." In sharp contrast to such assertions, which rule out any other possible parentage to actions by the use of the word "every," Ryle argued in The Concept of Mind that the intellectualist legend results in an infinite regress of thought: Variants of Ryle's regress are commonly aimed at cognitivist theories. For instance, in order to explain the behavior of rats, Edward Tolman suggested that the rats were constructing a "cognitive map" that helped them locate reinforcers, and he used intentional terms to describe their behavior. This led to a famous attack on Tolman's work by Edwin R. Guthrie who pointed out that if one was implying that every action must be preceded by a cognitive 'action', then what 'causes' this act? Clearly it must be preceded by another cognitive action, which must in turn be preceded by another and so on, in an infinite regress. Guthrie's key point is that Tolman's explanation, which attempts to explain animal cognition, does not really explain anything at all. As a further example, we may take note of the following statement from The Concept of Mind: In light of Ryle's critique, we may translate the statement by Emerson into: "The ancestor of every action is an action." - a reminder of Thomas Aquinas. Or we can go even further and argue that, according to Ryle: "The ancestor of every behavior is a behavior". As the use of the word 'behaviour' in the sentence above indicates, Ryle's regress arises from the Behaviorist tradition. Near the end of The Concept of Mind, Ryle states Ryle's brand of logical behaviorism is not to be confused with the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner, or the methodological behaviorism of John B. Watson. Alex Byrne noted that "Ryle was indeed, as he reportedly said, 'only one arm and one leg a behaviorist'." Cognitive scientists have Ryle's regress as a potential problem with their theories. A desideratum for those is a principled account of how the infinite regress that emerges can be stopped. See also the homunculus fallacy.
Response to Ryle's regress
anticipated Ryle's Regress when he wrote in The Critique of Pure Reason the following: "But of reason one cannot say that before the state in which it determines the power of choice, another state precedes in which this state itself is determined. For since reason itself is not an appearance and is not subject at all to any conditions of sensibility, no temporal sequence takes place in it even as to its causality, and thus the dynamical law of nature, which determines the temporal sequence according to rules, cannot be applied to it." In essence, Kant is saying that Reason is outside of the causative elements of the natural world and as such is not subject to the law of cause and effect. Hence, for Kant, Reason needs no prior explanation for any of its choices or volitions. Ryle's assumption is that all volitions are physicalistic processes and thus subject to cause and effect. If such is the case, then Ryle would be correct in his regress. However, if some volitions are not subject to cause and effect, per Kant, then Ryle's regress fails.
